Speaker 1: Hi guys, and welcome to our video on making videos for class projects. In this video, we're going to go over the following things. When and why it's appropriate to make a video for a project. And if you're watching this video, you've probably already got the idea in your head that you want to make a video. Some of the best tech and apps you can use while creating a video for class. Some filming tips, some production tips, publishing tips. If you're already a pro at making videos, you may want to watch this video at a faster speed. You can click down on YouTube and speed it up a little bit. Or you can skip around to the parts that you think will be applicable to you. But this is a very basic overview of some of my best tips I have for creating the best videos you can for your class projects. You've just been assigned a project and you see the teachers listed. You can create a video as one of the options for the product you're creating in your project, which is great. You're so excited, you love videos. But you want to think about, is video the best fit? So is this the best thing you could do to demonstrate your knowledge for the particular project? Now, some projects may require you to make a video no matter what. For example, you could be creating a trailer for a movie of a book that you studied in class. Or your project is to create a video explaining something. But if you do have the option, really take the time to consider why you want to do a video. Just because it's fun and you get to hang out with your friends? You may want to think about that again. If you're excited about creating a video because it'll give you a new way to explain things, or give you a chance to show some of your editing talents to other people, that's great. But make sure you do think about if you're working by yourself, if you're working in a group, and the time it'll take you to create and produce this video. So again, time considerations are a big part of it. When is the project due? How much time do you have to make the idea for the video, record the video, and then finish the production of the video? If you have to learn anything about software, or if you have to create certain props, that may take extra time. If you're working with a group, sometimes these people will have to meet up after school or outside of class, and you may not have the time you need to do this video. Think really hard about the planning before you actually commit. Again, there is some learning curve to creating videos, and if you already have experience, I definitely recommend going for it. If you really haven't created a video before, and this is a group project, I would recommend making sure there's someone in your group who has a little bit of experience with video editing and video production. Now again, with group work, you never want it to be one person who's doing all the editing and all the producing and all the work. So do make sure it's a balanced level of effort and everyone's contributing their own parts. So briefly, what are some of the best tech and apps you can use to create a video? Now at our school, we're fortunate because we have a lot of resources in our digital media lab, but all you really need is something that you can record with. So I use my phone a lot for my videos. You can also record like I'm doing right now with the webcam, the built-in camera on my computer. This is, I'm talking to my webcam right now. Some people actually have nice video cameras they can use as well, but use what you have available to you. You don't have to make it extremely fancy to have a good quality video. If you want to do a photo slideshow and narrate over that, that's great too. That's another good way. And you also want to think about, is your video going to be a one-take thing? You're going to record it all in one swoop? Or are you going to have to do some editing? And if you have to do editing, think about who's recording, how you're getting that material to the software you need to edit it. For example, if I record on my phone and I want to edit on my computer, make sure that these two things can talk to each other. So I can airdrop my video recordings from my phone onto my Mac, but if I wanted to get my video onto a PC on my friend's computer, you have to think of another way to do that. Maybe sending an email, but the video file may be too big. So you always have to be careful with where you're filming and how you're getting the video to a place where you want to edit it. Think about the type of video you want to record. You'll see with my flip videos, I do a lot of different styles. Sometimes I'll draw something with my hands and you can see what I'm working on. This is great for math problems. Other times I'll be talking directly to the camera and have props or demonstrating labs. This is like the mini movies. There's picture-in-picture, which is what I'm doing right now. I'm talking to you guys, but there's also slides in the background to help you understand what I'm talking about. Or I could do the whiteboard, the classic whiteboard video. I had one group of students last year. They kind of did a parody of my videos and it was really funny and great. Think about how you want to present your information in your video before you choose the type of style. And of course, there's also animation. So if you're familiar with things like Powtoon or other easy animation software, those are good options for creating a video as well. Now some filming tips. Think about audio. Think about what you're recording your video on and how the audience is going to hear that information because if you have poor quality audio, sometimes that can lead to a poor video. So when I'm recording on my computer, I have decent quality recording a microphone built into the computer, but I also use this USB microphone that helps out with the audio a little bit. Phones generally have good audio as well, but make sure if you are recording with a device, test the audio first because you don't want to do a whole bunch of footage and then realize later that the audio is bad. Make sure you have a plan. Some people like to rehearse. Some people like to write a script. Some people like to storyboard out their ideas first. So this is also important if you're working with a group so you can move as quickly as possible when it's time to actually film. If you're going to use something to explain something to your teacher, think about how you're going to include things like subtitles or props or signs. You can add subtitles and special effects, of course, with editing software, but if you need to make any props or signs, that's going to take place in the pre-production stage, so make sure you allocate time for that as well. And then, of course, camera work. The person who is filming is going to have to have a steady hand because you don't want to hold the camera and have it moving all over the place. That's no good for the viewer. Sometimes I use my little tripod here, or you can just set your camera up on a desk. Always film if you're uploading to something like YouTube. Horizontal, not vertical, like you're recording for Instagram or something. So always film like this so that you can get good quality picture when you upload the final product. All right, production tips. So sometimes people want to edit their movies, and that's great. If you're not doing one take, this is a good option, but again, there is a learning curve to managing the software. So if you don't know already how to do it, be sure to build in the time to learn some of these things. I edit a lot of movies with the iMovie app on my phone. I'll pull it up for you guys. But you can also use iMovie on your computer. You can use Windows Movie Maker. There's a lot of other easy editing software, YouTube even. You can upload a video to YouTube and then edit within YouTube now. So here we go. And this is really easy. I can create a video pretty simply, and edit it, and cut and paste different clips into it, add music, and that kind of thing. Now, make sure when you finish your video, you know how you're going to upload it. Again, that tech piece of getting it from one device to another is sometimes tricky. You don't want to edit a full video on your phone and then realize you have no way to get this somewhere else if you don't have internet connection or whatever. You can upload some videos directly to YouTube from your phone though, so keep that in mind. Also, when you are including special effects, or pictures, or music, or sound effects in your video, please make sure that you have the rights to use this stuff. Now, there's a lot of great fair use music out there on the internet. YouTube has a whole music library of audio that you can use in your movies that isn't copyrighted and isn't something that you'll get in trouble for using. I try to do my best to include pictures and other things that are fair use as well, so all the images you see in this video were found on a site called Pixabay, and it's a large library. It's sort of like a Google image search only for fair use images where I can use them without worrying about any copyright infringement. You can also do a Google search. You can toggle your settings on there, but make sure that you do pay attention to this. I used to make a lot of videos with my brother when we were growing up, and a lot of times we would use songs that were popular in the day, and we uploaded them to YouTube in the early days, but now a lot of those videos are either flagged or have been removed from YouTube because we used songs that we weren't supposed to because we did not have the rights or the permission to produce those songs. Even if it's just for fun, even if it's for educational purposes, you still need to make sure you actually have the rights to upload a video with that material. And this doesn't mean if there's a song you like, you can include it just because you cite the source. Fair use is something different. It's not just citing your work. It's having the permission to use the work and reproduce it and put it out there on the Internet. So let's talk about uploading. Now, your teacher may have requirements for how they want the video uploaded or shared. There's a lot of places to share video on the Internet, most commonly YouTube, and if you already have a YouTube account, you probably can link it to your ITHS account and upload it. Just make sure that everyone is okay with you uploading to YouTube, including your teacher, including your parents. If they don't want you uploading to YouTube, there are other ways to get your video to the teacher to turn it in. You can also put a video in your Google Drive, so you can upload it and then share the video with your teacher. Keep in mind if you're uploading it to a site like YouTube, you want to make sure you toggle the sharing settings to either unlisted or public, so that the teacher can see it. If you keep the video private, what's going to happen is only people logged into your account will be able to see the video. So you want to make sure the teacher actually does have access to watch the video when you turn it in. And of course, there's always email or USB. You can get it to the teacher in a different way if none of those ways work, but please make sure you check with your teacher's requirements for the project before you turn it in. So that is quick video tips in a nutshell. I will share some of my favorite free software and editing links down below and places I go to help me make my videos. But hopefully this is a helpful intro to some of you, and I'm happy to answer more questions if you guys have any other ideas or concerns about making a video for class. Thanks.